A beret or an analogous article is knitted in conventional manned/by means of a knitting machine having two rectilinear or flat needle beds, a front bed and a back bed, at least one of the beds being capable of being racked, each of the beds also being provided with needles enabling stitches to be transferred from one bed to the other.
It is known to knit in successive rows of stitches on both beds until there remain thereon only two edges to be assembled together, and then to unite the edges after the article has been transported to a linking machine.
Proposals are made in French patent application FR-A-2 409 337 and in European patent application EP-A-0 063 518 to eliminate the use of a linking machine and of the associated labor by transferring each of the stitches constituting one of the edges from one of the beds to the other and then uniting the stitches by sewing using a special sewing device, but that has the drawback of complicating manufacture of the knitting machine.